Inventions -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Spy stories; World War, 1939-1945 -- Fiction
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HENRY HORN'S X-RAY EYE GLASSES
by DWIGHT V. SWAIN
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories December
1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: "Look!" said Henry Horn with a gasp. "Here, you look at
the camp through the glasses!"]
[Sidenote: Henry Horn had a new invention; a pair of glasses that worked
on the x-ray principle. But he didn't expect them to reveal Nazi secret
agents and their works of sabotage!]
"It's not enough to have a nudist colony move in next door!" fumed
Professor Paulsen. "No, indeed! That wouldn't disrupt things enough.
Now, in addition, every ne'er-do-well in the county comes prowling over
our farm in order to spy on the naked numbskulls!"
Scowling ferociously, the gaunt scientist stamped violently back across
the meadow's lush verdure toward the little country home he shared with
his partner, Henry Horn. Beside him, matching his own long strides, came
the savant's old friend, Major Ray Coggleston of Army Intelligence.
"None of us can hope for a bed of roses all the time, Joe," Coggleston
remarked, grinning at the professor's outburst. "'Into each life some
rain must fall,' you know. You've got trespassers to bother you. Me, I'm
responsible for protecting one of the biggest explosives laboratories in
the country against Axis espionage and sabotage."
Instinctively, as he spoke, the officer's eyes sought out the long, low
Ordnance experiment station, barely a mile away. Professor Paulsen,
following the glance, nodded.
"You're right," he agreed. "And when you come right down to it, my
worries over the nudist camp back there"--he jerked his head toward the
high board fence which marked the boundary--"aren't very important. Not
with a war in progress."
By now the two were in the yard and rounding the corner of the house.
The next instant they stopped dead in their tracks.
There, in the shade of the building, stood a slight, familiar figure. A
figure which, at the moment, was the center of attention for a little
knot of interested spectators.
"Oh, yes, gentlemen, it certainly does work!" cried Henry Horn
enthusiastically, his scraggly goatee jerking spasmodically with each
nod of emphasis. He waved the battered pair of binoculars he clutched in
his right hand. "Yes, it's a marvelous invention. You can see everything
you want to, just like you were right inside that camp. And only a
dollar for a minute's look!"
The professor's face jumped to beet red, then apoplectic purple. His
fists clenched, and the sound he made as he sucked in his breath closely
resembled that of a cow pulling her foot out of a mudhole. He started
forward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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